A    REPORT    OF    THE    EXERCISES    AT    THE 

OPENING   OF 

ALEXANDER   COMMENCEMENT   HALL, 

PRESENTED   TO   PRINCETON   COLLEGE 

BY  MRS.  CHARLES  B.  ALEXANDER. 

BACCALAUREATE  SERMON  PREACHED  BE- 
FORE THE  CLASS  OF  1894  OF  PRINCETON 
COLLEGE,  ON  SUNDAY,  JUNE  TENTH, 
1894,  BY  THE  REV.  FRANCIS  LANDEY 
PATTON,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 
COLLEGE. 

PRINTED  BY  REQUEST  OF  THE  MEMBERS 
OF  THE  CLASS. 


ALEXANDER  COMMENCEMENT   HALL. 


STENOGRAPHIC    REPORT 

OF   THE    EXERCISES    AT   THE 

OPENING  OF 

ALEXANDER   COMMENCEMENT   HALL, 

PRESENTED  TO    PRINCETON    COLLEGE   BY 

MRS.  CHARLES   B.  ALEXANDER, 

ON  SATURDAY,  JUNE   NINTH,   1894. 

The  Rev.  Francis  Landey  Patton,  D.  D.,  LL.  D., 
President  of  the  College,  presided. 

The  members  of  the  Board  of  Trustees  of  the  Col- 
lege, the  Rev.  James  McCosh,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  the  late 
President  of  the  College,  the  Dean  and  members 
of  the  Faculty,  instructors  and  other  officers  of 
the  College,  occupied  seats  upon  the  rostrum  near 
the  President.  Many  distinguished  visitors  were 
present,  among  them  the  Hon.  Seth  Low,  LL.  D., 
President  of  Columbia  College,  Ethelbert  D.  War- 
field,  LL.  D.,  President  of  Lafayette  College,  and 
members  of  the  Governing  Boards  and  Faculties  of 
Harvard,  Yale,  Columbia  and  other  Universities  and 
Colleges.  The  members  of  the  Senior  Class,  in  caps 
and  gowns,  occupied  the  central  part  of  the  main 
floor  of  the  hall,  while  the  galleries  were  filled  with 
the  members  of  other  College  classes  and  their  friends. 


The  Rev.  William  Henry  Green,  D.  D.,  LL.  D., 
offered  the  prayer  of  dedication  as  follows:  "Accept, 
O  Lord,  this  building,  now  opened  for  the  first  time, 
erected  with  an  earnest  desire  of  promoting  true 
learning  and  sincere  piety  and  of  furthering  the  best 
interests  of  this  College.  Vouchsafe  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  ends  of  its  establishment,  we  beseech 
thee,  O  Lord.  May  this  structure  abide  through 
long  years  as  a  memorial  of  the  beneficence  of  the 
liberal  donor,  keeping  in  ever  fresh  memory  the  hon- 
ored name  she  bears. 

"While  the  beauty  of  its  form  and  of  its  adorn- 
ment tends  to  refine  and  elevate  the  taste,  while  the 
accommodation  here  afforded  for  the  public  exercises 
of  the  College  is  of  the  most  distinguished  char- 
acter, and  while  the  example  of  beneficence  here 
shown  forth  is  upon  the  most  liberal  scale,  we  im- 
plore thee,  O  Lord,  graciously  to  smile  upon  all  that 
shall  be  done  in  this  hall,  at  this  season  and  in  all  fu- 
ture seasons,  to  train  the  mind,  to  discipline  the  facul- 
ties, to  strengthen  the  powers  of  young  men,  to  fit 
them  for  higher  and  more  effective  usefulness  in  life. 
From  this  hall  may  there  go  forth,  year  by  year,  suc- 
cessive generations  of  well-trained,  thoroughly  dis- 
ciplined, well-equipped,  right-spirited  young  men  to 
do  good  service  in  the  various  avocations  in  which 
they  may  engage  and  in  the  positions  to  which  they 
may  severally  be  called,  all  of  which  we  ask  in  the 
name  and  for  the  sake  of  our  Divine  Redeemer  and 


5 

Lord  Jesus  Christ,  to  whom  be  glory  and  dominion 
for  ever  and  ever.     Amen." 

President  Patton  then  said  : 

Ladies  and  gentlemen.  This  is  a  glad  day  for  us 
all.  We  are  glad  that  it  is  so  bright  a  day.  The 
sky,  however,  is  a  little  overcast.  I  refer,  not  so 
much  to  the  visible  heavens,  but  to  the  conditions 
under  which  we  meet.  We  hoped,  as  one  of  the 
most  enhancing  elements  of  our  pleasure  to-day, 
to  have  Mrs.  Charles  Alexander  with  us.  Circum- 
stances over  which  she  has  no  control  have  made 
this  impossible.  What  Mr.  Alexander  would  have 
said  in  Mrs.  Alexander's  behalf,  if  he  had  been  with 
us,  will  be  read  by  Col.  McCook. 

I  received,  a  day  or  two  ago,  a  telegram  from  Mrs. 
Alexander  which  I  will  read,  and  which  I  am  sure  you 
will  appreciate.  It  is  dated  at  Thompson  Falls,  Mon- 
tana, June  6th,  and  is  as  follows  : 

"  Dr.  Patton,  President  of  Princeton  College. 

"  We  are  indefinitely  detained  by  floods.  The  rail- 
road is  washed  out  on  both  sides  of  us.  We  cannot 
begin  to  express  our  deep  disappointment  at  not  be- 
ing with  you  on  the  9th.  We  hope  Alexander  Com- 
mencement Hall  will  be  constantly  used  and  most 
useful  to  the  College.  Col.  McCook,  acting  for  me, 
will  present  the  Hall  to  the  Trustees.  Three  cheers 
for  Princeton." 

(Signed)         Harriet  C.  Alexander. 


(The  members  of  the  Senior  Class,  occupying  seats 
upon  the  main  floor  of  the  hall  and  the  other  classes 
in  the  gallery,  stood  up  and  gave  the  Princeton 
cheer  for  Mrs.  Alexander.) 

In  presenting  the  hall  to  the  Trustees  of  the  Col- 
lege, in  Mrs.  Alexander's  name,  Mr.  McCook  said  : 

Mr.  President  and  Mc7itbers  of  the  Board  of  Tr^tstees. 

In  his  Inaugural  Address,  President  Patton  spoke 
in  anticipation  of  a  time  when  the  faculties,  and  grad- 
uates, and  students  of  the  University  might  pass  in 
procession  into  a  hall  worthy  of  such  a  gathering. 
It  was  in  order  that  this  idea  might  in  some  degree 
be  realized,  that  this  building  was  begun.  I  have 
now  the  honor  of  giving  it  to  the  College  in  Mrs. 
Charles  Alexander's  name.  [Applause.]  In  speak- 
ing for  Mrs.  Alexander,  I  would  express  to  you,  Mr. 
President,  and  to  the  trustees  and  faculty,  her  thanks, 
for  your  encouragement  and  for  the  cordial  interest 
which  you  have  taken  in  the  fulfillment  of  her  pur- 
pose. Thanks  are  due  especially  to  the  architect,  Mr. 
Potter,  of  whose  good  taste  and  ability  you  have  suf- 
ficient proof. 

This  hall  is  both  a  gift  and  a  memorial.  It  is  a  gift 
to  a  noble  and  enduring  institution.  It  is  a  tribute 
to  Princeton  College,  to  the  students  who  give  it  life 
and  energy,  to  the  graduates  who  have  done  it  honor, 
to  the  officers  who  have  been  faithful  to  its  great  tra- 
ditions, to  the  learning  which  in  Princeton  has  always 


found  a  home.  May  I  not  say  that  it  is  in  a  pecuHar 
sense  a  tribute  to  its  President,  whose  words  were 
the  inspiration  of  the  idea  [cheers],  and  whose  work 
for  both  rehgion  and  learning-  have  been  a  cause  of 
admiration,  and  a  motive  to  generosity  in  the  mind 
of  the  giver. 

It  is  Mrs.  Alexander's  hope  that  this  hall  may  al- 
ways be  a  centre  of  University  activity.  Here,  as  the 
years  go  by,  graduates  will  take  leave  of  their  col- 
lege. Here  the  friends  of  science,  and  of  letters,  and 
of  the  arts  may  assemble.  Here  also  will  doubtless 
be  heard  the  voices  of  those  who  return  from  various 
fields  after  harvests  of  inquiry  and  discovery.  It  is 
not  a  temple  of  religion,  but  in  a  very  real  sense  it  is 
dedicated  to  the  cause  of  truth.  And  it  is  the  desire 
of  the  giver  that  nothing  shall  find  welcome  here  but 
that  which  is  in  conformity  to  the  will  of  Him  who  is 
the  Truth  Incarnate. 

This  hall  is  also  a  memorial.  And  I  shall  perhaps 
be  pardoned  if  I  add  that  this  is  signified  by  the 
name.  There  have  been  other  generations  of  Alex- 
anders whose  memorials,  more  enduring  than  stone, 
have  already  been  seen  in  the  works  and  lives  of 
men.  There  is  a  monument  to  them,  which  they 
share  with  others,  in  the  Princeton  School  of  Theol- 
ogy, with  which  they  were  once  identified.  And 
there  are  humbler  reminders  of  them  hard  by,  in  this 
their  place  of  burial.  It  is  in  honor  of  them,  as  well 
as  an  honor  to  this  hall,  that  the  memory  of  former 


generations  who  were  faithful  to  the  academic  Hfe  of 
Princeton  is  thus  perpetuated. 

Upon  behalf  of  Mrs.  Charles  Alexander,  with  her 
best  wishes  and  hopes  for  all  that  Princeton  is,  and 
for  all  that  Princeton  will  yet  be,  I  present  to  the 
Trustees  of  this  College,  the  Alexander  Commence- 
ment Hall.    [Continued  Applause.] 

V 

In  receiving  the  hall.  President  Patton  spoke  as 
follows : 

In  the  name  and  on  behalf  of  the  trustees  of 
the  College  of  New  Jersey  and  with  feelings  of 
gratitude  for  which  I  have  no  equivalent  in  words, 
I  accept  this  superb  gift,  which  Mrs.  Charles  Alex- 
ander has  made  to  the  college  over  which  I  have  the 
honor  to  preside. 

To  the  friends  who  during  the  past  six  years  have 
helped  me  in  my  work  and  have  seconded  my  efforts 
to  build  up  this  institution,  I  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude 
which  I  can  never  repay.  Their  kindly  help  has 
sustained  me  in  many  an  hour  of  discouragement  and 
has  lightened  many  a  burden.  I  wish  to  express  my 
obHgations  to  them  all  to-day,  the  living  and  the  dead. 

I  wish,  however,  to  express  my  special  gratitude, 
this  morning,  to  the  noble  woman  who  has  given  us 
the  Hall  at  whose  opening  we  are  assembled.  I  thank 
her  in  behalf  of  the  trustees.  I  thank  her  in  behalf 
of  the  faculty.  I  thank  her  in  behalf  of  the  alumni. 
I  thank  her  in  behalf  of  the  undergraduates,  for  this 


splendid  contribution  to  the  development  of  our  uni- 
versity life. 

It  would  have  added  to  the  gratification  which  we  all 
feel  at  this  moment,  if  she  could  have  been  here  to  re- 
ceive the  ovation  which  we  are  ready  to  give  her,  but 
I  may  say  in  her  absence,  what  perhaps  I  could  not 
have  been  permitted  to  say  in  her  presence.  I  wish 
to  pay  my  tribute  of  respect  and  admiration  for  Mrs. 
Alexander,  who  has  learned  that  there  is  no  better  use 
for  wealth  than  that  of  employing  it  in  the  service  of 
truth,  and  that  the  cause  of  truth  is  nowhere  more 
likely  to  be  served,  than  in  the  equipment  of  a  great 
university,  and  who,  accordingly,  in  the  exercise  of 
an  unostentatious  liberality,  has  given  us  this  beauti- 
ful building. 

That  the  gift  was  characterized  by  simplicity  you 
may  know  when  I  tell  you  that  a  simple  note — as 
simple  as  an  informal  invitation  to  dinner — is  all  that 
we  have  ever  had  to  indicate  Mrs.  Alexander's  gener- 
ous intention,  and  that  it  was  only  when  we  saw  the 
building  rise  in  its  stately  proportions  before  our 
eyes,  that  we  knew  the  scope  of  her  purpose. 

That  the  building  is  beautiful  I  need  not  say  ;  it 
speaks  for  itself.  I  congratulate  our  friend,  Mr.  Pot- 
ter, on  the  success  of  his  undertaking,  and  I  am  very 
sure  he  has  a  right  to  feel  pleasure  in  his  work,  and 
so  say  about  it,  what  the  Great  Architect  said  of  his 
own,  that  it  is  very  good.  [Laughter  and  applause.] 

It  gratifies  me  to  know  that  this  building,  which  is 


lO 


to  be  the  centre  of  our  academic  life,  is  to  be  called 
"  Alexander  Hall,"  for  no  name  is  more  clearly  iden- 
tified with  the  name  and  fame  of  Princeton  than  that 
of  Alexander.  [Applause.]  We  naturally  turn  to  the 
older  generation,  and  speak  especially  of  those  who 
are  famous  in  fields  of  literature.  I  cannot  help 
thinking  and  speaking  of  Dr.  Archibald  Alexander, 
the  sagacious,  saintly  man,  who  was  the  first  profes- 
sor of  theology  in  Princeton  Seminary,  the  discerner 
of  men,  the  interpreter  of  conscience,  the  analyst  of 
religious  experience,  who  as  professor,  preacher  and 
author,  was  guide  and  counsellor  of  generations  of 
clergymen  :  and  of  Dr.  Joseph  Addison  Alexander, 
the  linguist,  scholar,  man  of  erudition,  man  of  letters, 
poet,  exegete  and  preacher,  who,  though  he  died 
young,  was  the  foremost  man  in  his  church:  and  of  Dr. 
James  W.  Alexander,  the  man  of  broad  scholarship, 
elegatit  culture,  and  the  pulpit  orator,  who,  as  a  profes- 
sor of  both  of  our  Princeton  institutions,  as  well  as 
pastor  of  a  large  city  church,  laid  his  best  gifts  upon 
the  altar  of  Christian  truth  and  service.  [Applause.] 

These  men,  I  say,  belong  to  the  past ;  they  sleep  in 
that  hallowed  spot  that  contains  the  dust  of  so  many 
of  the  great  men  of  our  church  and  nation  ;  but  there 
are  others  of  that  same  generation  who  are  still  serv- 
ing the  church  and  the  college,  ahd  who  will,  as  we 
all  hope,  continue  to  serve  them  for  a  long  time  to 
come.     [Applause.] 

I  run  the  risk  of  rebuke  for  what  I  am  about  to  say, 


1 1 


but  I  could  not  forgive  myself  if  I  did  not  say  what 
is  in  my  heart  at  this  moment,  respecting  the  devo- 
tion of  one  who  has  found  time  amid  the  engrossing 
cares  of  a  large  legal  practice,  through  many  years, 
to  serve  this  college  as  a  faithful  and  devoted  trustee. 
I  refer  to  Mr.  Henry  M.  Alexander.  [Continued  ap- 
plause.] He  has  been  to  me  a  wise  counsellor  and  a 
true  friend,  and  I  am  glad  to  have  this  opportunity 
of  expressing  my  gratitude  to  him  and  my  high  ap- 
preciation of  his  services.  I  am  sure  that  if  he  has 
pleasure  to-day  in  seeing  this  beautiful  building,  it 
is  not  simply  in  the  fact  that  his  own  son's  wife  is 
the  giver,  but  also  in  the  fact  that  his  dearly  beloved 
alma  mater  is  the  recipient. 

There  is,  I  am  glad  to  say,  in  the  younger  genera- 
tion of  Alexanders,  no  lack  of  those  who  are  worthily 
representing  this  distinguished  name  in  the  pulpit,  at 
the  bar,  in  the  practice  of  medicine,  in  the  professor's 
chair,  in  business;  and  who,  so  far  as  my  knowledge 
of  them  goes,  have  carried  with  them  into  all  the 
walks  of  life  that  grace  of  style,  that  facility  and 
felicity  of  expression  that  seems  to  belong  to  them 
all  as  their  inheritance. 

I  cannot  mention  them  by  name,  but  there  is  not 
one  who  better  deserves  to  be  mentioned  than  Mr. 
Charles  B.  Alexander  himself,  whose  work  in  his  pro- 
fession covers  the  wide  field  of  advocate,  counsellor, 
and  author.  [Applause.] 

Long  may  the  Alexander  family  remain  identified 


12 

with  Princeton,  and  may  the  day  be  far  distant  when 
there  shall  be  no  one  to  enter  this  building,  as  a  mem- 
ber of  this  university,  who  can  share  with  it  the  glory 
of  its  name.   [Applause.] 

I  feel  flattered  with  the  suggestion  that  this  build- 
ing is,  in  any  way,  connected  with  the  hope  that  I 
expressed  in  my  inaugural  address.  I  do  not  pretend 
to  disguise  the  fact  that  I  feel  a  special  sense  of  pro- 
prietorship in  three  of  the  buildings  that  have  been 
erected  on  the  campus  during  my  administration,  of 
which  this  is  one,  and  that  I  feel  specially  proud  of 
being  able  to  claim  the  donors  as  my  personal  friends. 
I  am  particularly  pleased  at  having  this  building  re- 
ferred to  as  the  fulfillment  of  a  prophecy,  because,  if 
I  remember  right,  I  uttered  other  prophecies  at  the 
same  time  [laughter  and  applause],  and  I  cannot  help 
indulging  the  hope  that  other  friends  will  continue 
what  Mrs.  Alexander  has  begun  in  the  way  of  pro- 
phetic fulfillment  [laughter],  and  that  the  cycle  may 
be  so  short  that,  having  as  a  young  man  dreamed 
dreams,  I  may,  without  waiting  to  be  an  old  man,  see 
visions  of  the  coming  glories  of  Princeton.  [Applause.] 

This  building  stands  to-day  as  the  centre  of  our 
university  life,  and  is  an  invitation  to  us  and  to  our 
generous  benefactors  to  go  on  toward  the  completion 
of  our  university  equipment.  It  represents  the  syn- 
thesis of  culture  in  what  it  is  and  in  what  it  is  to  con- 
tain and  the  purpose  it  is  meant  to  subserve. 

Upon  this  platform  will  be  represented,  in  increas- 


13 

ing  numbers  and  by  men  of  brightening  fame,  the 
various  fields  of  inquiry  in  philosophy,  literature,  and 
science.  Before  us,  year  by  year,  as  we  shall  do  this 
year,  we  shall  bring  together,  for  the  last  time,  the 
men  whom  we  are  to  send  forth  as  our  contribution 
to  the  intellectual  and  moral  forces  of  the  world. 
We  shall  meet  here  from  year  to  year  to  listen  to  the 
best  that  can  be  said,  by  men  who  have  a  right  to 
speak  with  authority,  in  the  departments  in  which 
they  have  won  renown. 

Back  to  this  temple  of  learning,  generation  after 
generation,  the  students  of  this  college  shall  come, 
from  time  to  time,  to  relight  the  lamp  of  learning  at 
the  fires  that  burn  upon  this  altar  ;  and  arm  in  arm 
together,  walking  around  its  cloisters,  shall  wake  the 
memories  of  the  past  and  recount  the  stories  of  the 
friendships  of  former  days. 

This  building  shall  be  not  only  a  synthesis  of  cul- 
ture, but  in  the  mind  of  the  generous  giver  and  in  the 
minds  of  the  members  of  the  corporation  which  ac- 
cepts it,  it  shall  stand  also  as  a  symbol  of  the  union 
of  culture  and  religion.  All  truth  leads  up  to  Kim 
who  is  the  way,  the  truth,  and  the  life.  All  earnest 
study,  reverently  undertaken,  must,  in  the  end,  bring 
us  closer  to  God. 

We  do  not  profess,  in  this  institution,  to  embark 
upon  an  ocean  of  discovery  without  chart  or  compass. 
We  believe  in  God  and  we  believe  also,  in  Christ.  And 
so,  my  friends,  as  we  opened  the  exercises  this  morn- 


ing  by  invoking  the  blessing  of  the  Almighty,  let 
us  rise  and  close  them,  with  bowed  heads,  while 
our  ex-president,  venerable  and  best  beloved,  pro- 
nounces upon  us  the  apostolic  benediction. 

The  Rev.  James  McCosh,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  then  pro- 
nounced the  apostolic  benediction,  which  brought  the 
proceedings  to  a  close. 


Resolution  Adopted  by  the    Graduating  Class  of 

Princeton  College,  on    Commencement  Day, 

June  Thirteenth,  1894. 

Whereas,  The  Commencement  of  1894  has  been 
made  memorable  by  the  use,  for  the  first  time,  of 
Alexander  Hall ;  and 

Whereas,  The  gift  of  this  magnificent  building  to 
the  College  by  Mrs.  Charles  B.  Alexander  has  given 
a  new  interest  to  all  the  exercises  of  Commencement 
week  ;  therefore,  be  it 

Resolved,  That  the  members  of  the  Class  of  1894 
heartily  join  in  the  general  expression  of  thanks  to 
Mrs.  Alexander,  for  her  great  benefaction  to  the  Col- 
lege, and  especially  for  her  liberality  and  kind  con- 
sideration in  causing  the  memorial  inscription  of  the 
Class  of  1894  to  be  placed  over  the  main  entrance  to 
the  Commencement  Hall. 


BACCALAUREATE  SERMON  PREACHED  BE- 
FORE THE  CLASS  OF  1894  OF  PRINCETON 
COLLEGE.  ON  SUNDAY,  JUNE  TENTH, 
1894,  BY  THE  REV.  FRANCIS  LANDEY 
PATTON,  D.D.,  LL.  D.,  PRESIDENT  OF  THE 
COLLEGE. 

PRINTED  BY  REQUEST  OF  THE  MEMBERS 
OF  THE  CLASS. 


BACCALAUREATE  SERMON. 

Then  said  Jesus  unto  the  twelve,  Will  ye  also  go  away?  Then  Simon  Peter 
answered  him,  Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go  ?  thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life. 
And  we  believe  and  are  sure  that  thou  art  the  Christ,  the  son  of  the  living  God. 
— John  vi.  67-9. 

I  can  imagine  that  tliere  was  a  look  of  sadness  on  our 
Saviour's  face  as  he  turned  to  his  disciples  with  the  ques- 
tion :  "Will  ye  also  go  away?"  It  is  hard  to  feel  that 
you  are  losing  ground  ;  that  confidence  in  you  is  waning  ; 
that  the  contagion  of  distrust  has  spread  until  it  has 
reached  your  most  intimate  friends,  so  that  they  receive 
your  words  in  discreet  silence  instead  of  responsive 
approval,  and  if  they  keep  their  loyalty,  do  so  by  constant 
defence  of  it  and  in  the  way  of  justification  rather  than 
with  enthusiasm. 

Something  of  this  sort  had  happened  to  Jesus.  What  he 
said  about  giving  men  his  flesh  to  eat  and  raising  them 
up  at  the  last  day  was  too  much  for  the  multitude.  Given, 
as  they  were,  to  supernaturalism,  there  w^as  in  this  escha- 
tological  supernaturalism,  to  use  Pfleiderer's  phrase,  some- 
thing which,  with  their  literal  understanding  of  it,  was  too 
gross  for  them  to  hear  it  without  impatience.  The  hard 
sayings  which  Jesus  had  uttered  in  their  hearing,  settled  for 
them  the  question  of  further  companionship  with  him. 
The  doubts  had  been  growing,  I  dare  say,  for  skepticism 
is  not  a  sudden  thing.    But  there  comes  a  time,  when  the 


cumulative  effect  of  little  things  which  go  to  shake  con- 
fidence, is  felt  with  overwhelming  power;  and  so  "from 
that  time,"  we  read,  "  many  of  the  disciples  walked  no 
more  with  him."  It  was  when  he  felt  himself  deserted  by 
the  many,  that  he  turned  his  sad  eyes  with  earnest  gaze 
upon  the  few  who  still  stood  by  him  and  asked  :  "  Will 
ye  also  go  away  ?  " 

I  can  imagine  that  there  was  an  element  of  sad- 
ness in  the  minds  of  the  twelve  disciples,  too  ;  for  these 
sayings  which  had  been  hard  to  those  who  left  the 
Saviour  were  no  less  hard  to  them  ;  and  there  may  have 
been  moments  when  they  debated  with  themselves  the 
question  whether  they  should  go  or  stay.  This  penetrat- 
ing interrogation,  therefore,  went  home ;  it  formulated 
vague  feelings  ;  it  was  a  revelation  of  inner  life.  It  may 
be  that  the  thought  of  leaving  Him  had  more  than  once 
crossed  their  minds,  but  now  the  question  was  before 
them  in  a  form  that  could  not  be  evaded.  By  one  of 
those  lightning  flashes  of  intuition  Peter  saw  the  full 
meaning  of  the  question.  He  realized  that  he  was  face 
to  face  with  a  choice  of  alternatives.  These  things  that 
Jesus  had  said  were  a  tax  upon  his  faith,  it  is  true,  but 
then  his  life  had  been  broadened  by  companionship  with 
the  Master.  He  had  learned  that  there  was  something 
more  in  life  than  mending  fishing  nets  by  the  shore  of 
the  Sea  of  Galilee.  He  had  been  delivered  from  the 
humdrum  of  existence,  and  there  was  in  his  mind  the 
vision  of  a  high  ideal  to  be  wrought  for  in  this  world,  to 
be  completely  realized  in  the  world  to  come.     To  know 


19 

Christ  was  to  have  life  and  to  have  it  more  abundantly. 
To  give  up  Christ  was  to  give  up  the  ideal.  There  was 
no  via  media,  and  so,  out  from  the  depths  of  his  heart 
and  in  words  as  clear  as  light,  there  leaped  the  Apologia  of 
Christianity:  "  Lord  to  whom  can  we  go.  Thou  hast  the 
words  of  eternal  life."  He  might  have  clung  doggedly  to 
Christ,  refusing  doubt  and  refusing  to  look  for  a  cure  of 
doubt;  refusing  to  reject  the  Saviour  because  he  would 
not  give  up  eternal  life  :  or  he  might  have  resigned  him- 
self to  despair,  refusing  to  continue  in  fellowship  with 
Jesus  because  his  reason  refused  its  acquiescence  in  the 
hard  things  that  Jesus  taught.  But  he  took  neither 
position.  The  moment  he  realized  the  crisis  in  his  life 
he  understood  that  the  way  to  keep  the  synthesis  between 
the  hard  things  and  the  eternal  life  was  through  a  super- 
naturalism  that,  by  including,  would  explain  them  both. 
And  so  it  came  to  pass  that  Peter's  answer  in  its  com- 
pleteness is  not  that  of  a  man  who  by  sheer  force  of  will 
makes  choice  of  desperate  optimism  because  he  will  not 
make  choice  of  desperate  pessimism,  but  of  one  who  has 
a  reason  for  his  choice.  *  Why  should  we  go  away  ? 
Why  should  we  give  up  the  eternal  life,  or  forsake  the 
one  who  has  declared  it  to  us.  We  believe,  we  have 
been  believing  all  along,  that  thou  art  the  Christ,  the 
son  of  the  living  God.' 

I  cannot  help  seeing  here  a  picture  of  the  religious 
problem  of  to-day,  As  I  watch  the  trend  of  religious 
thought  and  see  how  fast  we  are  approaching  the  point 
where  we  must  choose  and  where  men  must  see  that  we 


20 

must  choose  between  out-and-out  naturalism  and  out-and- 
out  supernaturalism  it  seems  to  me  that  the  whole  move- 
ment is  sketched  for  us  in  the  text  :  the  religious  diffi- 
culties, the  defection  of  some,  the  doubts  of  others,  the 
sharp  alternatives,  and  the  true  solution  of  the  problem. 
I  am  especially  drawn  toward  this  theme  to-day, 
because  I  am  addressing  those  who  are  so  soon  to  go 
out  from  this  College,  and  who  because  they  have  come 
into  contact  with  a  broader  culture  cannot  but  by 
reason  of  that  contact  have  felt  the  force  of  some  of  the 
criticisms  to  which  their  hereditary  faith  has  been  sub- 
ected.  You  are  in  a  position  that  enlists  my  deepest 
sympathy.  By  your  training,  by  reason  of  your  broader 
knowledge,  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  you  have  grasped 
the  idea  of  the  unity  of  the  world,  there  are  elements  in 
Christianity  which  strike  you  now  as  otherwise  they 
would  not,  as  years  ago  they  did  not,  as  hard  sayings. 
And  then  you  have  perhaps  come  under  the  influence  of 
men  who  in  their  writings  assume  that  it  is  all  over  with 
Christianity,  who  plainly  intimate  that  the  "dear  Lord 
Jesus  has  had  his  day;"  and  the  self-confident  tone 
which  they  assume,  their  very  bravado  of  unbelief  has 
had  its  effect  upon  you,  so  that  you  falter,  it  may  be, 
where  once  you  firmly  trod.  It  is  a  gratifying  fact 
that  so  many  of  you  are  Christian  men  ;  and  of  those 
who  are  not  professedly  Christians,  I  suppose  that  there 
are  few,  if  indeed  there  are  any,  who  have  deliberately 
chosen  to  walk  no  more  with  Jesus.  There  may  be 
some  who  make  no  disguise  of  their  indifference  or  who 


21 


even  take  pride  in  their  skepticism.  And  their  example, 
added  to  other  reasons  which  in  some  unformulated  and 
insidious  way  have  been  at  work,  is  perhaps  leading 
some  of  you  to  regard  your  continued  faith  as  a  matter  of 
debate  and  doubt.  I  come  then  with  tender  feelings  to 
you,  my  brothers,  this  morning,  to  repeat  the  Saviour's 
question  and  to  ask  :  "  Will  ye  also  go  away." 

It  is  easy  to  generalize  the  situation.  Here  on  the 
one  hand  were  certain  supernaturalisms  about  eating  the 
Saviour's  flesh  and  being  raised  from  the  dead  at  the  last 
day :  and  here  on  the  other  hand  was  the  ethical  ideal 
of  eternal  life.  It  seemed  as  though  the  one  made 
needless  demands  upon  faith  while  the  other  was  a 
priceless  possession.  It  was  the  inseparability  of  the 
two  that  proved  embarrassing  to  the  disciples  and  which 
made  Peter's  decision  so  prompt.  And  to-day  these 
same  elements,  seemingly  so  conflicting,  enter  into  the 
essence  of  Christianity.  We  have  in  it  a  great  system 
of  supernaturalism  involving  miracle,  and  comprising 
theological  statements  regarding  the  Person  of  Christ, 
the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  and  the  future  destiny  of 
souls :  and  we  have  a  sublime  morality  which  deals  with 
human  conduct  under  great  satisfying  categories.  To 
be  told  that  man  is  a  child  of  God,  that  in  spite  of 
failure,  winning  victory  through  struggle,  he  is  to  realize 
his  better  self,  that  in  the  sacrifice  of  self  and  the  culti- 
vation of  the  social  virtues  man  is  to  realize  upon  this 
earth,  in  contrast  to  the  selfishness  that  has  claimed  it, 
the    kingdom   of   God :    how    easy  it    is  to   hear   that ; 


how  hard  to  part  with  this  idea  once  we  have  enter- 
tained it !  And  here  is  the  doctrine  of  the  miraculous 
birth  of  Jesus,  His  divine  claims,  the  story  of  His 
death  and  resurrection,  and  the  juristic  and  Jewish  col- 
oring which  has  been  imparted,  so  men  say,  to  thew 
moral  work  of  Jesus,  and  which  has  resulted  in  the 
dogma  of  the  atonement.  How  unethical  we  think  it ; 
and  local ;  and  unsuited  to  the  present  age  !  How 
sharp  the  contrast  between  these  two  elements  of 
historic  Christianity :  the  one  so  free  from  limitation,  so 
ideal,  so  rational,  so  independent  of  geography  and  the 
Gregorian  calendar  ;  the  other  so  historic,  and 
dependent  on  the  canons  of  historical  criticism  :  the  one 
shining  in  its  own  light  ;  the  other  obliged  to  defend 
itself  against  cavils  and  to  listen  to  all  who  pick  flaws  in 
the  evidence.  The  old  antithesis  confronts  us  that  con- 
fronted the  disciples.  There  are  hard  sayings  that  try 
our  faith  and  tempt  us  to  walk  no  more  with  Jesus :  and 
there  is  the  eternal  life — ideal  morality  which  we  cannot 
give  up  without  turning  our  earthly  existence  into  a 
graveyard.  Are  these  two  elements  of  Christianity  shut 
up  m  one  inseparable  synthesis  ?  May  we  not  give  up 
the  theology  and  keep  the  ethics  ?  Or  must  the  two 
go  together  ? 

I  know  how  words  that  I  have  spoken  from  this  pulpit 
have  been  regarded.  I  know  that  I  have  been  criticised 
because  I  put  the  dogma-side  of  Christianity  with  an 
emphasis  that  left  the  impression  that  I  underrated  the 
life-side  of  Christianity.     I   know  how  in   doing  this  I 


23 

have  been  regarded  as  narrow  and  illiberal ;  how,  in  the 
judgment  of  some,  all  such  modes  of  presenting  Chris- 
tians are  anachronisms.  Yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  if  one 
should  think  that  I  undervalue  the  ethical  side  of  religion. 
Christianity  is  in  order  to  life,  higher  life,  broader  life, 
purer  life,  eternal  life.  But  I  am  nevertheless  con. 
strained  to  feel  that  Peter  spoke  for  all  time  when  he 
uttered  the  words  of  the  text.  Apostasy  from  Christ  is 
the  disruption  of  morality.  Christ  cannot  be  divided  ;  we 
must  accept  Him  as  a  theologian  if  we  keep  him  as  a 
moralist.  When,  therefore,  we  are  speaking  in  behalf  of 
the  high  supernaturalism  of  orthodox  Christianity,  it 
must  be  understood  that  we  are  at  the  same  time  making 
the  strongest  plea  for  every  da^  morality. 

To  many  this  will  seem  like  an  extreme  statement. 
Many  w^ill  feel  that  there  is  surely  some  middle  ground, 
and  they  will  doubtless  feel  justified  in  maintaining  their 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  this  mediating  position  by  the 
actual  position  occupied  by  representative  thinkers  of  the 
day.  They  will  say :  Does  not  Weiss  stand  here,  and 
Kaftan  here,  and  Pfleiderer  here,  and  Caird  here,  and 
Green  here,  and  Spencer  here,  and  Bosanquet  here  ?  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  are  there  not  innumerable  positions  that 
lie  between  the  strong  supernaturalism  of  orthodox 
Christianity  and  the  destruction  of  obligatory  morality  ? 
This,  however,  is  not  a  proper  way  to  judge.  We  must 
consider  not  where  men  are  actually  found,  but  what 
logical  right  they  have  to  be  where  they  are  found  ;  and 
how  long  they  can  be  expected  to  occupy  the  positions 


24 

they  maintain.  It  is  no  answer  to  him  who  sees  the  flood 
advancing  that  the  men  and  women  in  the  villages  that 
lie  below  it  and  in  its  path  are  without  concern.  The 
question  is,  how  long  they  can  stay  so. 

It  would  not  have  been  strange  if  men  with  a  logic 
less  resolute  than  Peter's  had  felt  that  he  had  been 
precipitate  in  thus  shutting  them  up  to  this  choice  of 
alternatives.  A  little  reflection,  it  might  have  been  said, 
would  have  suggested  another  answer  than  the  one  that 
Peter  gave.  '  Might  we  not  abandon  the  hard  sayings 
without  leaving  Christ  ?  This  gross  supernaturalism  to 
be  sure,  we  do  not  accept,  but  we  are  loyal  to  the  Master. 
His  theology  does  not  carry  our  reason,  but  we  must  cling 
to  His  doctrine  of  eternal  life.'  They  might  have  met  the 
Savior's  questions  with  a  prompt  avowal  of  devotion, 
while  maintaining  a  discreet  silence  as  to  their  theologi- 
cal skepticism.  Or  they  might  have  said,  '  The  truths 
of  reason  are  independent  of  the  conditions  under  which 
they  find  expression,  and  though  we  recognize  the  fact 
that  it  was  Jesus  who  first  enunciated  these  high  ideals 
which  bring  into  such  wonderful  consonance  the  impulses 
of  religion  and  morality,  we  are  nevertheless  not  to  be 
hampered  in  our  acceptance  of  the  universal  truth  by 
any  difficulty  we  may  experience  in  accepting  the  claims 
which  the  expounder  of  that  truth  may  make  in  his  own 
behalf.  We  may  go  away  from  Jesus,  but  we  shall  carry 
with  us  wherever  we  may  go  the  words  of  eternal  life.'  It 
would  have  been  possible  for  men  to  give  either  of  these 


25 

answers  to  the  question  which  Jesus  addressed  to  his  dis- 
ciples rather  than  the  one  that  Peter  gave.  Men  are  giving 
these  answers  to-day.  To  present  the  forms  in  which 
these  answers  are  given  would  be,  in  great  measure, 
to  write  a  contemporary  history  of  the  Philosophy 
of  Religion. 

The  most  familiar  form  of  the  minimising  theology  is 
perhaps  the  one  which  finds  expression  in  the  popular 
depreciation  of  the  Pauline  literature.  It  is  very  com- 
mon for  men  to  wish  that  we  might  hear  more  of  Christ 
and  less  of  Paul.  They  would  have  us  choose  our  texts 
more  frequently  from  the  Gospels  and  less  frequently 
from  the  Epistles.  It  is  not  that  they  deny  the  truth  of 
what  Paul  says,  but  that  they  feel  that  so  much  of  what 
he  says  is  abstract,  hard  to  comprehend,  and  remote  from 
the  practical  requirements  of  life.  With  the  men  to 
whom  I  refer,  this  disposition  to  put  Paul  in  the  back- 
ground does  not  indicate  theological  eclecticism  so  much 
as  a  change  of  theological  perspective.  Paul  is  too  full 
of  transcendental  statements  about  the  Divine  nature,  and 
seems  too  much  at  home  in  the  intimacies  of  the  Divine 
purpose  for  them  to  be  much  profited  by  w^hat  he  says. 
They  wish  a  simpler  Christianity  that  will  tell  them  how 
to  bear  the  burdens  and  fight  the  battles  of  life  and  not 
perplex  them  so  much  about  the  plan  of  salvation. 
But,  as  I  have  said,  these  men  do  not  dream  of  disputing 
the  inspiration  of  Paul.  They  are  not  aware  of  the 
questions  that  critics  raise  regarding  him.  How  much 
Paul's  theology  came  by  heredity  through  the  Pharisees 


26 

and  how  much  it  came  by  education  through  Philo;  how 
far  his  thought  was  Hebraistic  and  how  far  it  was 
Hellenistic  they  do  not  know  nor  care.  Of  the  idealized 
Christ  of  the  Epistles  in  contrast  with  the  concrete  per- 
sonality of  the  Synoptists,  they  have  not  heard.  Of  the 
human  Christ  as  universalized  by  St.  Paul  and  the  divine 
Christ  as  personalized  by  St.  John,  they  do  not  know, 
nor  do  they  know  anything  of  the  attempts  that  men 
have  made  to  go  through  the  New  Testament  and  explain 
away  its  supernaturalism  by  the  theory  of  tendency, 
or  to  eliminate  its  distinctive  doctrines  by  means  of  He- 
gelian generalizations.  They  somehow  think  that  they 
get  nearer  to  Christ  in  the  Gospels,  and  when,  in  earnest, 
fervent  words  of  affection,  they  speak  of  Jesus  as  though 
he  were  somehow  placed  in  sharp  antithesis  to  Paul,  they 
do"  not  know  how  closely  they  are  in  accord  with  those 
who  have  used  the  weapons  of  critical  learning  in  the 
creation  of  this  antithesis  in  order  that  they  might 
thereby  break  down  the  supernatural  claims  of  Jesus. 
And  yet  men  ought  to  see  without  much  argument  that 
if  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  if  Paul  spoke  by 
revelation  it  is  impossible  to  effect  the  change  in  values 
which  they  propose.  For  the  Christ  of  Christianity  is  to 
a  very  large  degree  the  Pauline  Christ.  To  depreciate 
Paul's  theology  is  to  depreciate  Paul's  estimate  of 
Christ.  Christ  is  not  an  idea  in  Paul's  theology,  he  is 
a  Person.  His  theology  centres  in  the  crucified  and 
risen  Christ.  With  Paul,  Christ  is  the  image  of  God, 
the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  in  the  flesh.     With  Paul,  it  is 


27 

Christ  who  is  the  propitiation  for  our  sins,  it  is  Christ  in 
whose  likeness  we  are  to  live  and  through  whom  life  and 
immortality  have  been  brought  to  light.  It  is  not  as 
easy  as  we  may  suppose  to  make  the  sharp  distinction 
between  our  faith  which  rests  on  Christ's  teachinor  and 
our  faith  which  rests  on  Paul's  teaching.  For  while  it 
is  true  that  we  have  in  the  Gospels  what  Christ  teaches 
about  eternal  life,  we  have  in  the  Epistles  what  Paul 
teaches  about  Christ.  And  what  we  believe  about 
Christ  has  not  a  little  to  do  with  the  value  we  attach 
to  what  Christ  teaches.  Our  idea  of  Christ  is  made  up 
in  part  of  what  the  Evangelists  give  us  and  in  part  of 
what  Paul  gives  us,  and  upon  the  assumption  that  the 
New  Testament  is  a  rule  of  faith  and  a  revelation  from 
God,  there  is  no  ground  for  the  discrimination  that  assigns 
an  inferior  place  to  the  Epistles  and  the  first  place  to  the 
Gospels.  It  is  clear  that  we  cannot  give  up  Paul  in 
order  to  keep  Christ  if  we  owe  our  knowledge  of  Christ 
to  Paul,  and  we  believe  that  Paul  spoke  by  revelation 
of  God. 

But  I  am  well  aware  that  a  more  consistent  demand 
for  the  abandonment  of  the  Pauline  theology  may  be 
made  by  those  who  do  not  take  this  high  view  regarding 
Paul's  inspiration.  Men  of  this  sort  can  quite  consist- 
ently say,  'We  reject  the  theology  .of  St.  Paul,  and  refuse 
to  give  our  acquiescence  alike  to  his  theological  con- 
struction of  the  person  of  Christ  and  the  theological 
inferences  that  he  draws  from  it.  We  appreciate  the 
ethical  maxims  that  Paul  uttered,  and  as  embodying  uni- 


28 

versal  ideas  we  retain  them  in  our  reconstructed  theology  ; 
but  his  theory  of  justification,  and  his  doctrine  of  the 
atonement,  including  his  conception  of  the  Christ  we 
refuse  to  be  bound  by  :  and  emancipated  from  the  thral- 
dom of  this  Jewish  and  juristic  theology,  delivered  from 
the  yoke  of  Pharisaic  metaphysics,  we  feel  all  the  more 
loyal  to  the  Jesus  of   he  Evangelists. 

It  is  easy  when  we  are  under  the  spell  of  a  fascinating 
writer  to  be  made  to  think  that  after  all  theology  was 
only  an  incident  in  the  Pauline  thought ;  that  through 
the  accident  of  birth  and  heredity  to  be  sure  he  gave  a 
Jewish  and  theological  coloring  to  his  profound  ethical 
conceptions,  but  that  at  heart  he  was  a  moralist.  So 
regarding  Paul  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  he  is  chiefly 
valuable  to  us  for  what  he  said  in  regard  to  great  ethical 
ideas.  He  had  read  the  Hellenistic  philosophy  to  some 
purpose,  it  is  supposed  by  those  who  entertain  this  view 
of  his  work,  and  had  reached  great  generalizations  on 
moral  and  religious  philosophy.  His  doctrine  of  the 
new  birth  was  the  dying  of  the  old  selfish  life  and  the 
beginning  of  the  new  effort  to  realize  the  better  self. 
His  doctrine  of  the  atonement  was  a  mechanical  way  of 
stating  the  great  law  of  self-sacrifice,  and  his  recognition 
of  the  brotherhood  of  Christians,  an  anticipation  of  the 
modern  doctrine  of  social  tissue.  I  confess  it  is  hard  to 
reconcile  the  antinomies  in  St.  Paul  when  I  read  the  criti- 
cisms of  our  religious  philosophers.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
whether  we  shall  take  him  as  a  Jew  who  distorted  the 
simple  gospel  of  the  kingdom  and  forced    it  into   the 


29 

mould  of  Pharisaic  theology,  or  as  a  philosopher  who  in 
advance  of  Hegel  and  with  a  degree  of  liberality  quite 
creditable  to  him  avowed  the  great  principle  of  self-reali- 
zation that  runs  through  all  Hegelian  ethics  or  ontology. 
This  at  least  is  very  plain.  If  Paul  spoke  by  revelation 
his  theology  and  his  ethics  go  together,  and  his  doctrine 
of  Christ  as  I  have  said  is  a  large  part  of  his  theology. 
If  he  did  not  speak  by  revelation,  his  speculations  of 
course  have  a  place  in  the  history  of  opinion  but  it 
seems  to  me  a  waste  of  time  to  be  showing  how  closely 
they  followed  the  Hegelian  rubrics. 

The  Hegelians  now  pay  Paul  the  compliment  of 
claiming  him  ;  and  their  great  doctrine  of  Spirit  struggling 
for  realization  or  expression  in  nature  finds  its  finest  inter- 
pretation in  the  eighth  chapter  of  The  Romans,  "The 
whole  creation  groaneth  and  travailfeth  in  pain  together 
until  now."  It  is  not  denied  that  we  may  be  helped 
in  our  interpretation  of  scripture  by  some  of  the  great 
ideas  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy.  I  have  great  respect  for 
the  generalizations  that  underlie  or  are  fairly  deducible 
from  Paul's  concrete  theological  statements,  but  one  is 
false  to  history  as  well  as  false  to  the  requirements  of 
language  when  he  seeks  to  evaporate  these  theological 
statements  into  Hegelian  abstractions.  That  Paul  ad- 
vanced great  ethical  ideas  is  doubtless  true  :  the  doctrine 
of  sacrifice ;  the  schism  on  our  ethical  nature  and  the 
striving  of  the  higher  against  the  lower  ;  the  doctrine  of 
the  organic  life  of  humanity.  But  these  are  inferences 
from  his  theology  or  are  inseparably  woven  into  its  tex- 


30 

ture.  If  the  one  was  dependent  upon  the  other  it  was 
not  the  ethic  that  begat  the  theology,  but  the  theology 
that  begat  the  ethic.  But  though  we  should  succeed  in 
reducing  the  area  of  Pauline  thought  that  is  deemed 
worthy  consideration  to  a  few  ethical  maxims,  we  should 
not  have  eliminated  the  problem  of  theology  from  the 
inquiry  concerning  Christ.  For  if  the  portrait  of  Jesus 
in  the  Gospels  is  to  be  trusted,  we  are  to  believe  that 
Jesus  taught  theology  as  well  as  morals.  And  what  he 
taught  about  himself  and  his  mission  is  so  distinct  that 
no  one  who  accepts  the  Gospels  has  the  slightest  reason 
for  rejecting  the  Epistles.  What  we  find  in  the  Epistles 
is  only  a  logical  expression  of  what  we  find  in  the  gos- 
pels. What  Paul  taught  explicitly  Jesus  taught  im- 
plicitly. The  antithesis  between  the  hard  saying  and 
eternal  life,  between  theology  and  ethic  goes  back  to  the 
place  where  we  found  it — goes  back,  that  is  to  say,  to  the 
Gospel  story  ;  and  it  is  only  by  mutilating  the  Synoptists 
and  denying  the  credibility  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  that 
men  can  ever  succeed  in  making  the  historic  Christ  a 
moralist  who  made  no  claims  to  supernaturalism. 

There  is,  I  know,  a  mediating  position  between  anti- 
supernaturalism  and  the  Pauline  theology,  and  its  most 
prominent  exponents  are  in  the  Ritschlian  school.  With 
great  beauty  of  reasoning  Kaftan  tells  us  that  the  king- 
dom of  God  as  given  in  the  Gospels  is  the  only  satisfy- 
ing ideal  of  human  life.  The  moral  history  of  mankind 
reaches  its  climax  there.  Our  life  is  and  must  remain  a 
torso  unless   it    can    reach  out   into  the  supra-mundane 


31 

sphere.  Our  moral  relations  and  our  moral -ideals  must 
relate  themselves  to  our  faith  in  God  if  they  are  to  con- 
tinue to  be  commanding.  The  history  of  humanity 
shows  nothing  to  compare  in  sweep,  in  beauty,  and 
grandeur  of  thought  with  this  ethical  ideal  presented  in 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  of  God :  an  ideal 
involving  mutual  self-sacrifice  of  loving  service  in  union 
with  faith  in  God  and  under  promise  and  with  the  pros- 
pect of  perfect  life  in  the  world  to  come.  We  shall  not 
willingly  give  up  the  words  of  eternal  life  in  which  this 
ideal  is  embodied.  And  yet  these  words  are  not  intu- 
itions. However  reasonable,  they  did  not  originate  in 
human  reason.  They  are  a  revelation.  They  must  rest 
on  revelation  to  be  commanding.  As  Kaftan  says :  "All 
depends  on  the  fact  that  in  that  faith  we  have  to  do  not 
merely  with  an  idea,  with  a  thought,  but  with  a  historic- 
al reality ;  the  historical  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  His 
relation  to  God  has  been  essentially  different  from  what 
is  seen  in  the  case  of  all  other  men ;  he  is  the  Son  who 
knows  the  Father,  through  the  knowledge  of  whom 
all  men  are  meant  to  come  and  can  come  to  the  knowl- 
edg^e  of  God.  This  fact  is  the  foundation  of  Christian 
faith  and  Christian  hope."  This  idea  of  the  eternal  life 
then,  is  mediated  to  us  through  Jesus,  and  Jesus  is  a 
revelation  of  God.  How  do  we  assure  ourselves  of 
this  ?  Shall  we  say  that  the  fellowship  in  this  truth 
which  Christians  share  is  born  of  the  Spirit  ?  Shall  we 
seek  an  easy  road  of  subjective  certitude  which  will 
make  us  independent  of  history  and  criticism,  of  miracle 


32 

and  scientific  objection  to  miracles  ?  Will  the  mysticism 
which  appeals  to  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  is  recklessly  inde- 
pendent of  history  save  us  from  the  necessity  of  answer- 
ing the  question  whether  the  advent  of  Jesus  interrupted 
the  natural  sequence  of  events  ?  I  am  glad  to  see  that, 
though  the  Ritschlians  are  prone  to  overdo  the  subjec- 
tive side  of  religion,  Kaftan  shows  that  we  cannot 
escape  from  the  necessity  of  defending  the  supernatural- 
ism  of  Christ  on  historic  grounds.  This  is  the  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  his  position.  For  it  is  useless  to 
decry  dogma  if  it  is  admitted  that  the  historic  Christ 
was  in  some  sense  supernatural  and  as  such  was  a  revela- 
tion of  God.  For  the  impulse  to  ask  in  what  sense  he 
was  supernatural  is  irresistible  :  and  the  answer  to  this 
qnestion,  if  there  is  material  for  an  answer,  is  a  dogma. 
The  story  of  the  New  Testament  is  either  fact  or  fiction. 
The  admission  of  the  supernatural  in  the  life  of  Jesus 
takes  away  every  reason  that  can  be  urged  against  ortho- 
dox Christianity.  And  while  Ritschlian  theology  may 
make  a  useful  protest  against  extreme  anti-supernatural- 
ism,  it  is  an  untenable  position  ;  and  those  who  occupy 
it  will  be  forced  by  the  inevitable  logic  of  tendency  to 
go  forward  or  go  backward. 

The  real  question  in  religion  is  not.  How  much  super- 
naturalism  is  there  in  Christianity  ?  but.  Is  there  any  ? 
The  difficulty  which  men  feel  is  not  that  the  evidences  of 
Christianity  are  insufficient  ;  but  that  no  amount  of 
evidence  in  their  judgment  can  suffice  to  prove  a  mir- 
acle.    The  real  question  is  whether  the  advent  of  Jesus 


33 

marks  a  break  in  the  historic  continuity  of  the  race  ;  or 
whether  he  was  just  a  human  being  like  other  human 
beings  of  his  day.  Let  us  not  conceal  the  meaning  and 
importance  of  this  question  by  resorting  to  the  euphe- 
mistic language  of  philosophy.  It  does  not  help  matters 
to  say  that  the  Divine  Spirit  was  present  in  Jesus  as 
He  was  in  no  other  man,  and  therefore  that  Jesus  was 
divine;  that  God  realized  and  revealed  Himself  in  Jesus 
as  He  has  done  in  no  other  man,  and  therefore 
that  Jesus  was  a  unique  and  exceptional  personality. 
For  those  who  say  this  say  also  that  God  is  revealing 
Himself  in  man  at  all  times ;  that  manhood  in  its 
essence  is  simply  this,  that  the  Divine  Spirit  is  dwelling 
in  and  giving  expression  to  Himself  in  our  bodily 
organisms.  So  that  all  it  comes  to  when  in  this  way  we 
say  that  Jesus  was  divine  is  that  Jesus  was  a  better  man, 
just  as  Shakespeare  was  a  greater  man  than  we  are. 
The  latest  writer  on  the  anti-supernaturalistic  side,  I 
mean  Dr.  Mcintosh,  states  his  position  without  reserve : 
''  We  must  take  Jesus  to  have  been  by  nature  and  to 
have  remained  from  first  to  last  a  member  pure  and 
simple  of  the  human  family  ;  a  link  of  the  human  chain 
just  as  any  of  ourselves  are,  having  all  the  properties 
of  human  nature  but  those  of  no  other."  This  is 
Pfleiderer's  position,  and  I  cannot  see  that  the  position 
taken  by  Edward  Caird  in  his  "  Evolution  of  Religion  " 
is  a  whit  different. 

You   will   agree   with    me,    I    think,    that    you    are 
confronted  with  a  great  question  when  you  study  our 


34 

text  in  the  light  of  current  discussion.  The  hard 
saying  of  Christianity  is  not  this  miracle  or  that  ;  but 
it  is  miracle.  Can  we  give  up  miracle  and  cling 
to  Christ  ?  Think  of  what  Jesus  is  when  the  super- 
natural is  eliminated  !  There  is  no  atonement,  no 
doctrine  of  forgiveness,  nothing  supernatural  in  the 
structure  or  contents  of  the  Old  Testament ;  nothing 
supernatural  in  the  New.  Jesus  is  a  man,  He  was 
born,  he  lived  and  died  ;  He  was  pure-minded  but  not 
sinless;  He  had  high  ideals  but  no  exceptional  au- 
thority for  enunciating  them.  He  believed  in  God  and 
the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  He  founded  a  society 
based  on  the  practice  of  self-sacrifice  and  the  indul- 
gence of  the  hope  of  immortality.  He  made  mistakes 
about  Himself  and  arrogated  to  himself  a  place  in  the 
scale  of  being  which  He  did  not  possess,  and 
claimed  a  degree  of  homage  to  which  he  was  not 
entitled. 

Can  we  be  said  to  follow  Jesus  if  we  entertain  these 
opinions  respecting  him  ?  We  may  accept  his  teachings 
of  eternal  life  perhaps,  and  in  his  union  of  morality  and 
religion  we  may  see  the  highest  ideal  of  humanity.  But 
it  is  because  these  ideas  commend  themselves  to  us  that 
we  adopt  them  not  because  he  taught  them.  The  mes- 
sage authenticates  the  Master.  The  Master  adds  no 
value  to  the  message.  He  no  longer  speaks  as  one  hav- 
ing authority.  We  may  call  ourselves  Christians  still, 
but  it  is  only  as  we  may  call  ourselves  Lutherans  or 
Calvinists  or  Wesleyans.     We   only  use   the  founder's 


35 

name  as  a  shorthand  way  of  indicating  the  tenets  with 
which  his  ministry  was  identified.  Surely  it  is  not  in 
the  old  sense  of  believing  in  Christ  in  which  we  were 
trained,  that  we  are  believers  in  Christ  now  if  Christ  has 
become  simply  a  member  of  the  human  family.  Are 
we  now  in  the  last  analysis  forced  to  choose  between 
the  acceptance  of  miracles  and  the  rejection  of  Christ  ? 
Were  these  men  not  right  after  all,  who,,  when  they 
could  not  accept  the  hard  saying,  walked  no  more  with 
Jesus  ?  Does  it  not  come  to  this,  in  our  own  day,  that 
we  must  choose  between  accepting  miracles  and  aban- 
doning Christ  ?  Is  there  any  question  so  important 
then,  or  fraught  with  greater  consequences  than  this, 
Will  ye  also  go  away  ?  Must  you  hold  to  the  uniformity 
of  nature  in  a  form  that  makes  a  single  miracle  impossi- 
ble ?  Must  your  naturalism  be  without  a  single  excep- 
tion ?  Are  the  facts  of  the  physical  world  so  articulated 
that  the  Incarnation  is  an  antecedent  impossibility  ?  So 
some  have  felt,  and  because  they  have  felt  so,  they  have 
parted  company  with  the  Saviour  whom  they  learned  to 
worship  in  their  childhood.  How  is  it  with  you,  my 
friend,  for  you  too  have  learned  the  story  of  the  Saviour 
through  the  gentle  ministry  of  a  mother's  love,  and  you 
have  been  brought  in  later  years  perhaps  to  look  upon 
this  world  as  a  great  machine  ?  Is  there  a  necessary 
antagonism  between  the  teachings  of  the  mother  at 
whose  knee  you  knelt  in  your  childhood,  and  that 
other  mother  from  whose  side  you  are  going  out  so 
soon  ?     I    feel    so    sorry   for   those   who    feel   that   the 


.       36 

breach  with  early  faith  is  inevitable,  and  in  whose  ears 
the  clock  has  struck  the  hour  when  they  shall  walk  no 
more  with  Jesus.  That  doubt  is  spreading ;  that  great 
names  are  enlisted  on  the  side  of  those  who  cannot 
bear  the  hard  saying  of  Christianity,  does  not  reconcile 
me  to  the  defection.  It  only  makes  me  fear.  And 
when  I  remember  how  the  charm  of  fascinating  style 
is  lent  to  the  service  of  unbelief,  and  how  in  alluring 
phrase  and  captivating  argument  a  plausible  and  elevated 
morality  is  presented  us  as  a  substitute  for  the  Christian 
faith  in  which  we  were  trained,  I  wonder  what  the  effect 
will  be ;  and  so  when  I  look  into  your  faces  to-day, 
my  brothers  of  the  senior  class,  and  for  the  last  time 
address  you  from  this  pulpit,  I  cannot  help  asking,  not 
in  curiosity,  but  in  solicitude,  not  to  suggest  the  doubt, 
but,  if  possible,  to  prompt  the  better  reply.  Will  ye  also 
go  away  ? 

We  cannot  give  up  the  supernatural  in  Christianity, 
for  this  is  the  outcome  of  it  all,  without  giving  up 
Christ.  May  we  not  give  up  Christ,  however,  without 
giving  up  eternal  life  ?  I  know  that  some  think  that 
there  is  a  place  in  the  world  for  a  non-miraculous 
Christianity.  Perhaps  there  is,  though  I  have  not  been 
able  to  find  it.  Such  a  Christianity,  however,  will  need 
no  schemes  of  missionary  enterprise,  and  will  really 
be  able  to  dispense  with  an  ordained  ministry.  So 
that  it  seems  to  me  there  was  an  element  of 
inconsistency  in  the  fervid  article  that  recently  ap- 
peared in  your  own  Literary  Magazine  which  con- 
ceded   the    sacred   character  of   the    minister's  calling, 


37 

and  pitied  those  who,  as  the  result  of  some  supposed 
arrest  of  intellectual  development,  are  about  to  enter 
that  calling  in  the  full  belief  of  the  truth  of  traditional 
Christianity.  I  can  understand,  though  I  do  not  sym- 
pathise with  those  who  desire  a  religion  consisting  of 
immutable  truths  that  are  independent  of  the  conditions 
of  time  and  space,  that  are  true  everywhere  and  at  all 
times,  that  appeal  to  us  by  their  inherent  reasonableness, 
that  do  not  ask  us  to  ransack  literature  two  thousand  years 
old,  and  that  are  not  tied  to  the  incidents  of  stage  and 
scenery,  and  actors  and  audience  that  make  up  the  drama 
of  Calvary.  They  want,  that  is  to  say,  a  religion  within 
the  limits  of  the  pure  reason,  as  Kant  would  say.  How 
religion  must  shrivel  and  be  dwarfed  in  its  proportions 
before  we  can  reduce  it  to  those  limits  we  may  learn  from 
Kant  himself,  and  even  Kant  kept  more  than  he  had 
any  logical  right  to  keep,  when  he  kept  the  doctrine  of 
immortality.  Peter  w^as  right.  The  history  of  opinion 
verifies  his  words.  To  give  up  Christ  is  to  give  up  eternal 
life.  Now  Christ's  doctrine  of  eternal  life  is  not  simply 
that  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  though  of  course,  it 
included  that ;  and  when  we  think  of  it  we  must  not 
think  of  Sheol  or  Hades  or  Orcus,  that  it  is  to  say,  the 
idea  that  we  are  to  lay  stress  upon,  is  not  that  of  some 
place  oi  posi  moi^iemQxistQncQ..  The  eternal  life  begins  in 
this  life  and  continues  for  ever.  It  involves  quality  of 
existence  as  well  as  duration  of  existence.  It  is  an 
expression  that  stands  for  the  continuous  development 
of   our   ethical    and    religious   nature.      And   the   time 


38 

element  in  it  is  significant  inasmuch  as  it  is 
an  assurance  that  we  are  destined  to  an  end- 
less career  as  moral  beings.  We  may  use  it,  there- 
fore, as  a  symbol  of  our  ethical  development.  Our 
Saviour's  ethics  moreover  were  very  different  from  the 
ethics  of  the  heathen  world.  He  did  not  sacrifice 
the  individual  to  the  State  as  Plato  did,  nor  by  making  him 
a  citizen  of  the  world  loosen  his  local  attachments  as  the 
Stoics  did.  He  did  not,  like  Aristotle,  make  the  good  con- 
sist in  the  avoidance  of  extremes ;  nor,  like  Epicurus,  in 
the  enjoyment  of  pleasure.  He  made  the  individual  and 
the  organism  mutually  subservient  to  each  other.  It 
was  through  society  that  the  individual  was  to  be  aided 
in  his  moral  growth  ;  it  was  through  men  of  strong 
moral  convictions  that  society  was  to  be  regenerated. 
Christ  took  the  individual  out  of  the  crowd  and  made 
him  feel  the  priceless  value  of  the  soul.  He  laid  stress 
on  personality  and  the  inner  life.  He  set  God  before 
men  as  their  ideal,  and  told  them  to  be  perfect  as  the 
Father  in  Heavien  is  perfect.  Old  virtues  that  went  to 
make  the  State  strong  were  not  discarded,  but  new  vir- 
tues were  born  under  the  influence  of  a  theology  that 
taught  men  to  believe  in  the  pitying  eye  and  tender  love 
of  that  Father  in  Heaven.  The  ideal  was  higher,  but 
mercy  was  broader.  Sin  was  branded  as  never  before, 
but  the  penitent  sinner  was  forgiven.  It  was  the  paradox 
of  Christianity  which  moralists  to-day  do  not  always 
understand,  though  they  have  lived  under  the  influence  of 
the  gospel,  that  it  makes  the  conscience  more  sensitive. 


39 

and,  at  the  same  time,  the  heart  more  tender ;  and  that 
we  can  sometimes  best  conserve  morality  by  forgiving 
the  breaches  of  morality.  The  eternal  life  was  morality 
— it  was  religion.  It  was  the  service  of  man  in  the 
service  of  God.  It  was  the  service  of  God  through  the 
service  of  man.  The  world  had  never  seen  the  like  of 
this  before.  We  may  well  hesitate  before  we  give  up  these 
words  of  eternal  life.  But  can  we  keep  them  ?  Can  we 
even  be  sure  of  immortality  when  we  cease  to  believe 
that  Christ  speaks  with  authority.  We  may  hope  that  the 
doctrine  is  true,  we  may  argue  about  it  as  Plato  did,  and 
Mendelsohn  and  Kant ;  or,  we  may  hand  it  over  for 
investigation  to  the  Society  for  Psychic  Research.  Mr. 
Myers  thinks  that  the  latter  course  is  the  proper  one. 
"  The  time,"  he  says,  "  for  a  priori  chains  of  argument, 
for  the  subjective  pronouncements  of  leading  minds,  for 
amateurish  talk  and  pious  opinion,  has  passed  away  ;  the 
question  of  the  survival  of  man  is  a  branch  of  experi- 
mental psychology."  I  hope  our  psychologists  appre- 
ciate their  responsibilities  now  that  the  fate  of  all  our 
pleasing  hopes  and  longings  after  immortality  is  to  sealed 
in  their  laboratories.  Of  course,  we  shall  be  told  that 
our  moral  nature  demands  immortality ;  that  is  to  say,, 
given  the  one,  the  other  follows.  True ;  but  which  is 
the  given  and  which  is  the  other  ? 

But  Jesus  was  a  theist.  Though  not  a  supernatural 
teacher,  he  was  a  teacher  of  belief  in  the  supernatural. 
He  taught  men  to  believe  in  God.  His  religion  was  a 
theology,  as,  indeed,  all  religion  must  be.     In  spite  of 


40 

Mr.  de  Gallienne's  dislike  of  theology,  and  his  assertion 
that  we  "  have  accomplished  the  inestimable  separation 
of  theology  and  religion,"  I  think  it  will  be  found  that 
even  "the  religion  of  a  literary  man  "  must  have  some 
theology  in  it.  In  this  I  agree  with  Dr.  Martineau. 
We  cannot  eliminate  God  and  keep  religion.  We  can- 
not define  religion  as  persistent  admiration  and  have  the 
word  religion  keep  any  significance,  for  that  admiration 
may  be  the  admiration  of  a  fine  picture,  a  fine  dog  or  a 
fine  day.  It  may  be  the  admiration  of  the  true,  beau- 
tiful and  good,  but  it  may  also  be  admiration  of  the 
false,  hideous  and  bad.  We  may  or  may  not  live  by 
admiration,  as  Wordsworth  says,  but  we  ean  have  no 
religion  without  God.  It  is  not  a  question  whether  we 
shall  have  any  theology  in  our  religion,  but  how  much  ? 
and  that  depends  on  how  much  we  know  about  God. 
I  confess  that  we  know  very  little  about  Him  if  we  cut 
loose  from  Him  who  has  declared  Him.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
question  whether  we  will  even  keep  God  as  an  article  of 
our  faith. 

I  should  be  the  last  man  to  say  that  a  man  cannot 
remain  a  theist  after  he  abandons  Christianity.  I  be- 
lieve in  rational  theism.  I  believe  that  theism  is  the 
logical  prius  of  Christianity,  and  though  there  never 
had  been  a  Christian  religion  there  would  have  been 
religion  and  a  belief  in  God  or  in  gods,  which  religion 
implies.  I  know,  too,  that  men  have  broken  with 
the  Christian  religion  and  have  not  given  up  faith  in 
God.     Pfleiderer  is  a  theist ;  Fiske  is  a  theist,  and  thinks 


41 

that  Spencer  is  a  theist.  T.  H.  Green  claimed  to  be  a 
tlieist,  and  Edward  Caird,  I  think,  is  trying  to  be  a 
theist.  I  will  not  be  too  exacting  either  in  my  defini- 
tions, and  should  certainly  be  sorry  to  commit  the 
fault  which  I  condemn  in  others,  of  branding  men  as 
Pantheists  who  fail  to  give  to  God  the  full  quota  of 
attributes  which  I  ascribe  to  him. 

And  yet  the  question  is  not  whether  theism  has  a 
rational  basis,  but  whether  the  dominating  philosophy 
which  leads  men  to  give  up  the  supernatural  in 
Christ  is  not  likely  to  end  in  their  giving  up  the  super- 
natural altogether  ?  It  may  be  easier  for  some  men  to 
believe  in  God  after  they  get  rid  of  miracle  and  He  no 
longer  stands  in  the  way  of  uniformity.  Epicurus  did 
not  mind  believing  in  the  gods  after  he  found  that 
they  were  harmless.  But  really  is  not  this  hostility  to 
miracle,  deny  it  though  men  may,  in  its  last  analysis 
the  outcome  of  a  philosophy  which  denies  the  numerical 
distinction  between  the  creature  and  the  Creator  ? 

Remember,  you  pass  the  same  mile-posts  in  which- 
ever direction  you  are  traveling;  but  the  direction 
alters  their  significance  immensely.  I  have  great  faith 
in  the  logic  of  tendency,  and  so  great  hope  that  the 
man  who  believes  in  God  will  believe  also  in  Jesus ;  and 
great  fear  that  he  who  gives  up  Christ  will  by-and-by 
give  up  God.  And  I  also  believe  in  the  reinforcing 
effect  of  historic  Christianity  as  an  argument  for  theism  ; 
for  while  faith  in  God  is  a  postulate  of  Christianity, 
the  facts  of  Christianity  constitute  a  strong   argumnte 


42 

for  belief  in  God.  There  is  no  reasoning  in  a  circle 
in  this  :  the  trains  of  argument  start  independently  from 
both  termini,  and  pass  each  other  on  the  road. 

If  the  numerical  distinction  between  God  and  the 
world  is  broken  down  we  lose  our  theism  ;  and  so  far 
as  theism  is  concerned  it  m.atters  not  whether  it  be  done 
in  the  terms  of  mind  or  matter.  The  succession  may 
read,  Parmenides,  Spinoza,  Hegel,  Caird  ;  or  it  may  read, 
Democritus,  Lucretius,  Biichner,  Spencer ;  the  outcome 
so  far  as  religious  faith  is  concerned,  is  very  much  the 
same.  The  interest  in  modern  spiritualistic  philosophy 
lies  greatly  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  half-way  house 
between  materialism  and  theism.  It  is  the  place  where 
wayworn  thirsty,  travelers,  moving  in  opposite  directions, 
meet  and  refresh  themselves.  Our  attitude  towards  much 
of  the  poetry  and  the  philosophy  which  deal  with  mind 
in  nature,  must  depend  upon  the  direction  in  which  it 
is  supposed  to  point,  just  as  the  same  degree  of  vitality, 
the  same  pulse-beat,  the  same  temperature,  in  a  case  of 
illness,  may  fill  your  heart  with  gratitude  or  make  it 
feel  like  lead,  as  it  may  signify  waning  strength  or 
reviving  energy.  And  when  to-day  I  hear  men  who 
have  been  trained  in  the  traditions  of  Christian  faith, 
talk  of  the  Divine  Spirit  striving  for  expression  in 
the  life  of  man,  and  explain  the  strong  utterances  of 
scripture  regarding  sin  as  only  metaphorical  statements 
of  the  struggle  between  the  higher  and  the  lower 
elements  in  our  being,  I  know  that  the  moment  is  a 
serious  one,  and  that  I  am  standing  at  the  death-bed 
of   religion. 


43 

With  faith  in  God  and  immortality  gone,  how  many 
of  the  words  of  eternal  life  are  left  ?  We  shall  be  told 
that  we  have  the  same  earthly  life  of  relationships  ;  the 
same  theatre  for  the  exercise  of  the  moral  virtues  that 
we  ever  had ;  the  same  arena  for  the  cultivation  of 
charity  and  the  outflow  of  benevolence ;  and  that 
having  parted  with  the  hope  of  the  future  life  we  shall 
be  able  to  make  all  the  more  of  this.  Instead  of  the 
consolations  of  religion  we  shall  have  the  consolations 
of  philosophy ;  and  men  will  console  us  for  our  loss 
of  consolation.  It  is  true  that  religion  once  made  the 
dying  bed  soft  as  downy  pillows  are,  but  then  in  doing 
this  it  only  was  delivering  us  from  the  terrors  that  it  had 
first  inspired.  Quanhtm  religio potuit  suadere  ^italorum  : 
so  Lucretius  said  long  ago,  and  Cotter  Morrison  is 
saying  it  to-day.  We  have  lost  our  dream  of  eternal  life 
but  it  may  not  be  such  a  loss  after  all.  We  may,  in  fact, 
be  all  the  better  without  it  as  Mr.  Caird  seems  to  think. 
But  it  will  be  found  that  religion  and  morality  are  as 
inseparable  as  religion  and  theology;  and  when  we  give 
up  God  we  are  in  a  fair  way  to  give  up  morality  also. 
Some  of  our  naturalistic  moralists  like  Gyzicki  are  at 
great  pains  to  assure  us  that  morality  is  safe  even  though 
religion  is  no  more  ;  and  some,  like  Mr.  Bosanquet,  still 
speak  of  the  civilization  of  Christendom  and  intimate 
that  we  shall  have  use  for  the  institutions  of  Christianity 
as  schools  of  ethical  training  after  Christianity  has  been 
abandoned.  I  do  not  think  that  the  prospects  of 
atheistic  Christianity  are  bright.     The  earthquake  that 


44 

overthrows  the  Church  will  overthrow  the  hall  of  ethical 
culture  as  well.  Morality  is  a  great  chapter  in  the 
history  of  man ;  it  is  proper  enough  to  study  it  and 
explain  it ;  but  the  fate  of  the  ten  commandments  may 
be  involved  in  the  explanation.  This  is  the  history  as  it 
is  taught  by  the  evolution  ethic.  We  have  developed 
the  moral  life  and  the  moral  law ;  we  have  gone  out  of 
Fetichism  into  Polytheism  and  out  of  Polytheism  into 
Monotheism ;  we  have  established  God's  throne  in 
the  heavens  and  have  come  to  believe  that 
His  kingdom  ruleth  over  all.  But  we  have  devel- 
oped the  belief  that  all  this  antecedent  belief  was 
illusion  :  what  then  is  the  legitimate  effect  of  this  latest 
phase  of  evolution  ?  Talk  as  we  may,  the  virtues 
that  have  made  our  Christian  civilization,  have  been 
fed  on  faith  in  God  and  belief  in  immortality. 
Men  have  feared  God ;  they  have  had  respect  for 
His  law ;  their  consciences  have  been  educated  in 
the  belief  that  this  is  right  and  that  is  wrong ; 
and  they  have  gone  through  life  under  the  domin- 
ating sense  of  moral  obligation.  And  with  all 
these  incentives  to  virtue,  see  the  unsuccessful  strug- 
gles that  men  make  with  appetite.  See  the  piti- 
able weakness  they  exhibit  in  the  presence  of  temp- 
tation. But  when  they  have  dethroned  God,  when 
they  have  broken  both  tables  of  the  law  in  pieces, 
when  they  have  fallen  down  before  the  golden  calf 
of  self-indulgence,  what  is  to  restrain  appetite  or 
to    hold   them    back    from    wrong  doing?      Will    men 


45 

be  chaste  because  it  is  good  for  social  tissue  for 
them  to  be  ;  or  honest  because  honesty  makes  for  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number  ;  or  truth- 
ful because  the  higher  nature  points  that  way  and 
the  veracious  man  is  more  surely  on  the  road  to 
self-realization  ?  No.  If  morality  is  conduct  to  which 
the  individual  is  expected  to  conform,  we  need 
all  the  help  we  can  get  in  the  development  of 
moral  behavior.  We  need  an  ideal,  and  neither 
form  of  the  evolutionist  ethic  can  give  us  one. 
That  the  race  of  men  is  improving  is  no  satisfac- 
tion to  me  if  I  know  that  all  the  possibilities  of 
existence,  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  are  confined 
to  a  life  of  three  score  years  and  ten.  Morality 
is  personal ;  responsibility  is  personal  ;  the  ideal 
must  be  personal  ;  self-realization,  to  mean  anything  for 
me,  must  mean  the  development  of  my  perfection 
in  a  perpetuated  personality.  We  need  a  morality, 
moreover,  that  has  content,  that  is,  which  has  com- 
mandment, which  can  say,  this  is  right  and  that  is 
wrong.  But  the  ethic  of  evolution  has  only  one 
commandments.  It  may  say.  Realize  your  higher  na- 
ture, or  it  may  say.  Seek  the  healthful  well  being 
of  society ;  but  beyond  that  it  has  nothing  to  say, 
and  it  ends  in  telling  the  individual  to  do  as  he 
pleases.  We  need  obligation,  the  categorical  im- 
perative, that  is  to  say.  It  is  useless  to  say  that 
we  have  it  whatever  the  explanation  may  be ;  for 
the     evo\utionist's    explanation    explains    it    away.       I 


46 

confess  that  he  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  accounting 
for  the  genesis  of  morality.  Mr.  Huxley,  in  his 
Romanes  lecture  admits  that  the  evolutionists  have 
been  somewhat  hasty  here, — Ah,  yes,  I  thank  Mr. 
Huxley  for  declaring  unto  us  the  parable  of  Jack 
and  the  bean  stalk.  Evolution  ethic  leaves  you  no 
obligatory  morality.  Why  then  should  I  be  moral  ? 
It  looks  as  though  the  bottom  had  dropped  out  of 
morality.  No  God,  no  religion,  no  immortality,  noth- 
ing but  this  life  and  no  obligatory  morality  in 
it.  This  is  the  outcome  of  leaving  Jesus.  To 
whom  will  you  go  ?  We  wish  pure  homes,  honest 
trade  and  the  outflow  of  benevolent  feeling.  How 
will  we  insure  them  ?  Will  the  ethical  phil- 
osophers help  you.  You  are  welcome  to  all  the 
comfort  you  can  find  in  them.  Read  Green  and 
Spencer  and  Sidgwick  and  Mackenzie.  They  will 
not  help  you.  Will  you  join  the  society  for  eth- 
ical culture }  The  members  of  this  society  are  seek- 
ing to  conserve  morality  now  that  they  have  destroyed 
the  basis  of  morality.  They  are  doing  what  they  can 
to  avert  the  disaster  which  their  philosophy  has  precipi- 
tated. Will  men  continue  moral  ?  Yes,  so  long  as  the 
flowers  of  Christian  culture  can  live  after  the  axe  has 
been  laid  at  the  root  of  the  tree  that  bears  them.  Will 
men  continue  moral  ?  Yes,  so  far  as  a  policeman 
can  do  duty  for  conscience.  Will  men  continue 
moral?  Yes,  so  long  as  the  social  sanction  operates 
against   immorality.       Men    are    afraid    of     it.       They 


47 

lose  more  sleep  now  over  a  breach  of  etiquette 
than  they  do  ov^er  a  breach  of  the  decalogue.  But 
the  mortal  sins  of  society  are  the  venial  sins  of 
the  gospel,  and  the  mortal  sins  of  the  gospel  are 
the  venial  sins  of  society.  To  whom  will  you  go  ? 
Where  will  you  find  comfort,  rest,  and  peace  ? 
Will  you  be  absorbed  in  business,  or  in  science,  or 
in  art  ?  Will  you  buy  your  peace  of  mind  by  in- 
venting schemes  for  constant  employment  ?  There 
is  no  escape  for  you,  Life  has  lost  its  zest.  The 
springs  of  existence  are  poisoned.  You  will  take 
one  more  plunge  into  pleasure  or  you  will  sit 
down    in   the    dark  shadow  of   despair. 

Many  a  hearth  upon  our  dark  globe  sighs  after  many 

a  vanished  face, 
Many  a  planet  by  many  a  sun  may  roll  with  the  dust 

of  a  vanished  race  ; 
Raving  politics  never  at  rest — as  this  poor  earth's 

pale  history  runs — 
What  is  it  all  but  a  trouble  of  ants  in  the  gleam  of  a 

million  million  of  suns  ? 
Stately  purposes,  valour  in  battle,  glorious  annals  of 

army  and  fleet, 
Death  for  the  right  cause,  death  for  the  wrong  cause, 

trumpets  of  victory,  groans  of  defeat. 

Love  for  the  maiden  crowned  with  marriage,  no  regrets 

for  aught  that  has  been, 
Household  happiness,  gracious  children,  debtless 

competence,  golden  mean  ; 


48 

What  is  it  all,  if  we  all  of  us  end  but  in  being  our  own 

corpse —  coffins  at  last, 
Swallow'd  in  vastness,  lost  in  silence,  drown'd  in  the 

deeps  of  a  meaningless  Past  ? 

Perhaps  I  have  been  describing  the  inclined  plane 
down  which  some  of  you  have  slipped  from  faith 
in  God  to  loss  of  faith  in  man.  Are  there  not 
times,  my  friend,  when  your  mind  reacts  against 
this  skepticism  ?  Having  doubted  faith,  do  you  not 
sometimes  doubt  your  unbelief?  Do  you  not  some- 
times find  yourself  saying :  '  Though  I  have  lost  faith, 
it  may  be  that  God  is  not  dead.  Though  I  have 
given  up  immortality,  it  may  be  I  cannot  avoid  it. 
Though  I  dispute  the  claims  of  the  commandments, 
it  may  be  they  still  bind  me.  Though  I  refuse  to 
believe  in  sin,  it  may  be  that  I  am  a  sinner  still. 
I  have  forsaken  Him  who  gave  me  the  words  of 
eternal  life,  but  my  mind  is  not  at  rest,  and  I  know 
not  where  to  go.'  But  go  on.  It  may  be  that  Christ 
has  come  from  God  ;  that  he  is  the  propitiation  for  our 
sins ;  that  he  holds  in  his  hands  the  gift  of  eternal 
life,  and  that  you  have  but  to  trust  him  to  enter 
into  the  full  heritage  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Give 
faith  a  chance  to-day,  my  friend.  You  have  tried 
a  part  of  Peter's  answer  to  the  Saviour's  question. 
Try  now  the  other  part.  You  have  tried  to  give  up 
the  supernatural  in  Christ  and  cling  to  Christ,  and 
you  find  you  cannot.  You  have  tried  to  keep  eter- 
nal life  after  you  have  forsaken    Christ,  and  you  find 


49 

it  is  impossible.  See,  then,  if  you  do  not  find  a 
better  theory  of  the  world  and  a  better  philosophy 
of  life  in  Peter's  bold  avowal :  "  We  believe  that 
Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  son  of  the  living  God." 
What  follows  then  ?  Then  the  same  progressive  idea 
binds  the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  together.  There 
is  movement  up  to  Christ ;  there  is  movement  on 
from  him.  Jesus  is  the  last  of  the  Prophets,  and  the 
first  of  the  Evangelists.  Then  we  pass  by  easy  tran- 
sition from  the  theology  of  Christ  to  that  of  Paul. 
Then  God  and  immortality  take  their  old  places  as 
postulates  of  our  moral  nature.  Then  we  have  the 
moral  government  of  God  as  the  objective  counter- 
part of  our  moral  nature  and  its  metaphysical  basis. 
Then  we  have  moral  perfection  as  our  ideal,  and  an 
immortal  life  as  the  sphere  of  its  realization.  Then 
the  moral  law  has  content.  We  find  it  in  the  Ten 
Commandments.  We  find  it  in  the  great  law  of 
love.  We  find  it  in  the  great  Pauline  doctrine  of 
Christian  expediency.  We  can  find  it  in  the  grow- 
ing complications  of  life.  New  relations  make  new 
duties ;  for  we  interpret  these  new  relations  under 
the  rubric  of  the  great  Christian  principle  that  the 
world  is  a  vicinage  and  all  men  are  brothers.  Reli- 
gion will  quicken  conscience,  political  economy  will 
imform  it,  and  morality  will  be  progressive. 

Then  we  shall  feed  the  hungry,  and  clothe  the  naked 
and  pity  the  sorrowing ;  but  we  shall  not  think  that 
we  can  abolish  poverty  or  bring  in  a  social  millennium 


50 

by  agrarianism  or  State  interference.  Then  the  gospel 
will  make  us  altruistic,  but  we  shall  not  abandon  the 
gospel  for  the  sake  of  becoming  altruistic.  Then  we 
shall  care  for  the  bodies  of  men  because  we  believe 
they  have  souls  to  be  saved ;  but  we  shall  not  give 
up  the  salvation  of  the  soul  to  promote  the  comfort 
of  the  body.  Then  we  shall  pray  that  the  kingdom 
of  God  may  come ;  but  it  will  be  the  kingdom  of 
righteousness  and  peace,  and  not  a  kingdom  of  comfort 
and  plenty.  It  will  be  a  kingdom  that  contemplates 
the  moral  perfection  and  blessed  immortality  of  a  great 
multitude  who  have  come  out  of  great  tribulation  ;  and 
not  one  that  contemplates  provision  against  hunger  and 
inclement  weather  for  an  army  of  men  who  are  march- 
ing in  a  vast  procession  to  nonentity  and  death.  Then 
the  old  motives  to  moral  life  will  assert  themselves 
once  more.  We  may  do  duty  out  of  sense  of  duty 
and  with  reluctance ;  or  we  may  do  it  because  we 
love  it,  and  spontaneously.  The  Bible  appeals  to  more 
motives  than  one.  '  It  appeals  to  love  and  to  fear ;  to 
self-love  and  benevolence ;  to  gratitude  and  the  law  of 
rio-ht.  Then  the  feeble  will  find  reinforcement  in 
the  help  of  the  Spirit  and  the  Christian  will  get  courage 
to  fight  against  sin.  He  feels  strong  in  his  weakness  and 
can  do  all  things  through  Christ  who  stengthens  him. 

Then  when  he  has  done  his  best  and  finds  he  is  an 
unprofitable  servant ;  when  he  tries  to  do  his  best  and 
fails  ;  when  he  has  promised  and  never  performed  ;  when 
appetite  rules  and  temptations  are  too  strong  for  him  ; 


51 

when  friends  desert  him  and  conscience  stings  him ; 
when  hope  dies  and  Hfe  is  a  failure ;  when  in  his  agony 
he  cries  :  "Oh,  God,  what  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?" — 
then  that  precious  gospel  of  Christ  will  come  to  him 
and  say :  '  Oh,  you  poor  child  of  sin  ;  you  have  sinned  ; 
your  sin  is  great,  and  the  punishment  may  seem  greater 
than  you  can  bear;  but  Christ  Jesus  came  into  the  world 
to  save  sinners.  He  came  to  save  you.  Go  to  Him  in 
this  sad  hour  of  your  life  and  find  peace  in  the  blood  of 
His  cross.'  Then  we  understand  the  answer  to  those 
who  tell  us  that  by  this  doctrine  of  forgiv^eness  we  make 
it  easy  for  men  to  sin.  That  is  what  they  said  to  Paul. 
But  aside  from  the  meanness  of  this  suggestion,  Paul 
said,  '  Nay,  the  Christian  is  a  new  creature — has  a  new 
life ;  how  shall  he  that  is  dead  to  sin  live  any  longer 
therein  ? ' 

Then  we  can  understand  how  the  Christian  who 
follows  his  Master  must  be  forgiving,  must  love,  must 
pity  distress,  must  work  for  the  uplifting  of  the 
downcast  and  down-trodden.  It  is  not  because 
philosophy  has  told  him  to  be  altruistic,  or  to  seek 
the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,  to  study 
what  will  promote  the  healthful  perpetuity  of  social 
tissue,  or  to  realize  his  higher  self.  It  is  because  God 
has  revealed  himself  in  Christ,  as  tender  and  full  of 
compassion.  It  is  because  Christ  died  for  us  that  we 
ought  to  lay  down  our  lives  for  the  brethren.  This 
spirit  of  forgiveness  and  charity  that  is  so'  distinctively 
Christian   is   the  reflex  effect  of  theology  on  morality. 


52 

And  so  we  find  that  the  supernatural  that  we  would 
fain  at  the  beginning  have  got  rid  of  to  save  the 
eternal  life,  is  really  a  very  important  part  of  that 
eternal  life ;  the  theology  that  we  would  flee  from  in 
order  to  save  the  ethic  is  part  of  the  very  marrow 
of  the  ethic.  Thus  we  see  the  comprehensiveness  of  the 
gospel,  the  fulness  of  the  blessing  of  the  gospel  of 
Christ.  Then  we  cease  to  wonder  that  Peter  was  so 
prompt  to  say  in  answer  to  the  questioning  Redeemer: 
"  Lord  to  whom  shall  we  go  ;  thou  hast  the  words  of 
eternal  life,  and  we  believe  and  are  sure  that  thou  art 
the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God." 


